The Baldwin County School District (BCSD) participated in the Georgia Department of Education's (GaDOE) innovative Culinary Support Pilot Program. They were one of 9 school districts selected to participate.
When applying to participate, Nelson stated that the application was specifically for Baldwin High School but through discussions and planning, they were able to plan a professional learning day to allow GaDOE chefs to work with all seven kitchens.
“The goal was to promote more homemade or scratch cooking to introduce new ways of flavoring food,” said Susan Nelson, BCSD director of nutrition. “Flavoring is very important to ensure our students want and enjoy the meals they are served.”
Nelson presented four or five recipes that are on the menu for the chefs to work on with all the district nutrition specialists. According to Nelson, the recipes chosen were ones that they had tried the United States Department of Agriculture’s recipe for and felt needed to be “tweaked a little more.”
“We have a lot of new staff and it's also hard to work on this goal during a work day,” said Nelson. “So opportunities like this not only offer a chance for exploration but help to train our staff in new experiences.”
Cooks worked in groups of two to make different recipes and discussed a range of topics like seasoning and herbs.
According to Nelson, the experience was very “eye-opening” for many of the cooks and very educational. Around lunch time all 60 of the food service staff were invited to sample the various recipes at Baldwin High School.
“I learned to learn on my own, but a lot of other managers were there and were helping and showing me what I love about it (cooking),” said Mattie Strickland, a nutrition specialist with the Early Learning Center. “These are translatable skills and can be used in a variety of places…I hope and pray they continue doing things like this.'
According to Nelson, flavoring is something that the district consistently works on and they always do a food tasting before serving the new recipe to a large quantity of people. Ensuring the taste of the food helps in the quality of the product produced and the satisfaction of the students.
“School nutrition is funded strictly by the federal government, and we receive money by students picking up a food tray,” said Nelson. “Students are our customers so if the food does not look good or taste good, they will not pick up a tray. We must have a high meal participation rate.”
GaDOE Culinary Specialist John Huff will return in February to work with two cooks at Baldwin High School for four days since the grant was initially for the school. He will be training them so that the two cooks can then train other employees on how to prepare the recipes and how they can use different flavoring techniques to enhance future recipes.
“We have worked with students to learn the benefits of flavoring and using healthier ingredients than what they may be used to,” said Nelson. “That is another benefit of our cooks being able to learn more about these techniques and be mentored by Department of Education chefs.”
The Baldwin County School District was the second school to participate in the pilot program. The program aims to enhance the culinary skills of cafeteria staff across the state, so districts were picked in various regions of the state to participate.